The noise of the babel

Detail van de Toren van Babel
Originally uploaded by Gryts.

Finding a way to quell the noise of the babel is probably one of the most important things a consultant can do.

Colored cards for facilitation

Some of us have been using colored 3x5 cards to help facilitate teams/groups/meetings, particularly with reaching a group decision. Here's another use.

Phone Conference this past Friday with G-CPD

Not many of us on the hook this past Friday with G-CPD. Between client work and leave, I think only half a dozen of us were available.

A couple of items of note.

First, the restructuring of the Chief of Staff's Office. G-CQM is now G-CPD, Office of Performance Management & Decision Support. The new emphasis appears to be on everything (including performance management) leaning toward supporting decision making. Decision Support is to span the various programmatic stovepipes and create systems which allow for fact-based decision making across the enterprise. From the G-CPD intranet site, it looks like there are five teams in the office:

• Executive Support Team
• Innovation Team
• Performance Excellence Team
• Business Architecture Team
• Decision Support Team

The biz architecture team is the remments of G-833, or whatever it was; they're the RMS people, Todd Watanabe & Lori Maselli. Yes, Lori's back in the fold with us.

Captain Ray noted there are 16 FTE at G-CPD with another 23 FTE as OPCs in the field. Not a lot of FTE, particularly if our work is not coordinated, to get a lot of work done.

Second, Captain Ray talked about beefing up the Organizational Performance Consultants' tool kits; bringing all of us up to speed on four additional elements beyond the former QPC toolkit:

• Readiness Management System
• Unit Leadership Development Program
• Organizational assessments
• Category 4 issues

There was some talk about what this beefing up means; I took it to mean knowing enough about each of these to help our organizational clients with their work; bringing these tools to them so that they can manage their performance and make decisions.

Captain Ray plans on making a spin around the CG to talk to all the OPCs, their supervisors, and the chiefs-of-staff; another dog and pony tour.

OPC Roles and Responsibilities

I'd been asked by Dan to write a little roles and responsibilities for organizational performance consultants to go into a new COMDTINST that is being drafted. You can find my first run at this here. Please take a look at it and, if you have any changes or suggestions, shoot them my way.

Thanks.

Blaming people vs. systems or processes

living like it's golden
Originally uploaded by Quereco.

I'm trying to wheedle my way in to work with a client who has what is, I believe, a huge process problem. Question: how can I identify this problem and highlight the benefits of solid management & leadership without coming across as if I'm attacking the people involved?